Ethics of Care and Feminist standpoint theory have been two of the leading feminist theories since 1970s and 80s, both of which are based upon women’s marginal social positions as caretakers in the households and care-related works across all levels of society, and both theories have been challenging against mainstream (malestream) moral traditions, as well as mainstream for the scientific tradition, in terms of making plausible an alternative moral and scientific research paradigm. For the past three decades, care ethicists and standpoint theorists have been constantly taking upon critiques from all sides (feminists and non feminists) so as to make theoretical revisions necessary for the legitimacy of gendered research both in moral and scientific discipline. Ethics of care is taken to be supplementary to virtue ethics, whereas standpoint theory is inclined to merge with feminist empiricism. As it turns out, two contemporary leading feminist theories, to my judgment, are gradually fading away from their distinctive voices in the dominant moral and scientific conceptual systems.

This paper aims at uniting ethics of care and feminist standpoint theory by cross referencing upon each other, and from there, I propose that the two views merge into what I will call caring standpoint theory. To that purpose, I will elaborate the substantial contents of caring standpoint theory insofar as how they can make intelligible the conception of strong objectivity. Moreover, I will defend the merged view in terms of its contributions to knowledge productions, in particular the view that the confirmation of knowledge should be laden with caring value. Likewise, different from the dominant view that have kept separate science, society (values) and ethics, caring standpoint theorists, as I conclude, are committed to the values of common good closely tied to labor of love, for the reason that they are epistemically significant to scientific objectivity.